Revealing attention - how eye movements predict brand choice and moment of choice

This dissertation contains three empirical essays on the role of attention in consumer choice. The models developed in this dissertation propose that attention reveals moment-to-moment utility accumulation processes that take place during choice. The first essay investigates which fundamental attention processes contribute to the accumulation of utility and brand choice. The results show that certain types of attention (e.g. attention for integration) are better able to reflect brand utilities, and brand loyalty manifests itself via attention. Essay 2 looks into the link between attention, brand choice, and moment of choice and proposes a model where both brand and search utilities change from moment to moment as more eye movements are observed. This provides insights into consumer heterogeneity in decision thresholds and implicitly decision duration, and test different drivers of brand choice and moment of choice. In essay 3, brand utilities are decomposed into two components that capture the importance of the attributes that describe the brands and the subjective value that the consumer attaches to the attribute levels corresponding to each of the brands on display. The results show that eye movements reflect not only how the consumer evaluates the brands, but also why some brands are preferred by identifying which attributes are considered more important over time.